by Ifeoluwa Olutayo
“To be honest, I found this style when I was in a terrible place,” Okeke Buchi says as I inquire about his motivations. He ponders it and then says, “No, no, the style found me.”
Drawing from a deep well of depression, he says that he let the work I see before me at this crowded, Ecobank-sponsored, Soto Gallery-led Art fair, take hold of him and express itself in hues of black and white.
There’s honesty in what he does, in what his work represents, with simplicity burdened with the heavy task of conveying complex emotions.
It’s compelling to get sucked into the look of it; a minimalist representation of culture, community, and relationships, even our relationship with the open sky.
Okeke chooses his warriors in the battle against self-expression as Ink, satin and acrylic find embrace, crowding the frame in a few, leaving space to contemplate in others.
The creations do not have mouths; their eyes communicate all that we need to know and their world requires no speech to draw from the well of emotions.
“With Misfits I was speaking to the ostracized in society, those who don’t fit in,” he says.
It’s pretty clear to see that the misfits dress the part of counter-culturists; they participate on the edges of society, navigating the world with The Clash’s London Bridge is Falling playing on their carry-on speakers.
He touches on culture with Kinfolks, his ode to the Benin Ivory Mask in the hand of his creation, eyes open in wonder, communicating a treasuring of what makes us what we are.
With the artworks Kindred 1 and 2, Okeke populates the frame with his creations, arms in an embrace, comradery etched in their faces, finding solace in the proximity of simply etched-out bodies.
The twin works, Shared Emotions 1 and 2 as the title suggests, find big-eyed brethren also sharing a gaze at a world outside the frame, maybe gazing at us, three-dimensioned freed of physical frames but building mental cages of our own. In their world, they wonder about the violin being played by one of their number, their joining illuminated by the night sky and by the sounds produced that we cannot hear. It may be pleasurable music or pleasurable company, but that doesn’t matter.
I cannot shake the honesty of what is poured out here, and I’m hoping to see where Okeke’s emotions lead his simple lines next.
Another artist I spoke to at this magnificent exhibition demonstrated the same honesty of expression.
It’s a given that we fall into lulls and extended downtimes, but we experience some emotions a little more often than we’d like to admit.
As humans, we lose; interaction is a prophesy, an evangelical proclamation of our eventual falling out.
It’s what Nwakuso navigates with one of her works on display at the art fair.
With Time Heals All Wounds, she is proclaiming a fact entombed in the core of our humanity; it’ll pass, and this serves as a cathartic expression for her, trying to deal with it all.
With the bluish hues finding convergence with the white streaks that run throughout the canvas, there’s a messiness, indicating the complexity of our emotions and confronting them, especially in situations of conflict.
The women in the painting are turned away from each other, but they stay connected with the running red lines, something that speaks to the continuous connections and moments spent in communion that link us till Time is no more.
For her, it’s not only applicable to interactions, even though it was what birthed this. We do find ourselves drowning in unmet targets, entropy-generated occurrences and failures that stay with us, just as fractures in our day-to-day relationships may cause us to sink.
I believe that we carry bits of us from every relationship that we ever find ourselves in and even when those relationships fail and collapse, we are indelibly marked, through actions, through changing preferences, through the ghosts of activities that existed only because the relationships did.
With this master force in artistic expression, she invites us to ponder on the complexities of ever-changing relationships and the parts of those lost that still stay with us, emotions we fixate on or even suppress, asking us to draw from the wells that be and remember that Time will sometimes be a foe, but for our pains, scabs and wounds, it will be a friend.
